COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: Gays/Lesbians
Military’s Discharges for Being Gay Rose in ’05
JOHN FILES, New York Times
August 15, 2006
WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 — The Defense Department discharged 726 service members last year for being gay, up about 10 percent from 2004, figures released by a gay rights group show.The group, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, obtained the information through a Freedom of Information Act request. A spokeswoman for the Defense Department, Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, confirmed that it had released the information.
On Monday, the legal group released a breakdown of discharges by installation. A sharp increase occurred at Fort Campbell, Ky., where in 1999 a soldier was bludgeoned to death in his barracks by fellow soldiers who thought he was homosexual. In 2004, 19 service members from the base were discharged, a number that climbed to 49 last year.
Fort Sill, Okla., had 27 dismissals last year, up from 8 in 2004. Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., had 60 dismissals, up from 40 in 2004, and the Marine base at Parris Island, S.C., discharged 22, up from 12.
The Army, by far the largest branch of the military, discharged more gay personnel last year than the other branches with 386, the figures show, followed by the Navy with 177, the Air Force with 88 and the Marines, the smallest force, with 75.
The overall number of men and women dismissed because they were found to be gay or because they disclosed their sexuality fell in the three years from 2002 to 2004. From Sept. 11, 2001, through last year, the discharge rate dropped 40 percent.
The total of such discharges in 2004 was 653. That compares with 770 in 2003, 885 in 2002 and 1,227 in 2001.
Under a policy introduced by the Clinton administration known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the military cannot inquire into service members’ sex lives unless there is evidence of homosexual conduct.
Those who volunteer the information have to be discharged. More than 11,000 members have been discharged for that reason, the legal group said.
In a review by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, the Pentagon said last year that more service members had been discharged for drug offenses, pregnancy and weight problems than for being gay.
Colonel Krenke said: “The Department of Defense policy on homosexual conduct in the military implements a federal law enacted in 1993 following extensive hearings and debate. The law would need to be changed to affect the department’s policy.”
The military has argued that allowing openly gay troops would disrupt unit cohesion and undermine the services’ missions. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that the Bush administration will not revisit the policy.
Representative Martin T. Meehan of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities, introduced a bill last year to repeal the policy on gay service members.
In an interview on Monday, Mr. Meehan pointed to “the seamless integration of openly gay service members into the militaries of many of our closest allies, namely the United Kingdom, Australia and Israel.” His bill has 118 supporters, including 5 Republicans.
A spokesman for the legal group, Steve Ralls, said it had detected no increased effort to oust members under the policy last year. Mr. Ralls said that some bases reporting increases in discharges had few, if any, reports of unchecked harassment. It often boils down to the tolerance of individual commanders, he said.
“In the end,” Mr. Ralls said, “we just don’t know what exactly led to these dismissals.”
Some service members have used the policy to escape their military obligations as morale has dipped and multiple overseas deployments have caused strain, Mr. Ralls added.
The legal group has also seen an increase in the malicious use of the Internet and e-mail to disclose the sexual orientation of service members, Mr. Ralls said. Sites like MySpace.com are routinely visited by service members and military officials, and service members who identify themselves as gay or lesbian on the Internet risk expulsion.
In one case, the orientation of a gay sergeant was disclosed to his superiors by anonymous e-mail messages. The sergeant was honorably discharged this year from the Army.
Lizette Alvarez contributed reporting from New York for this article.
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